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Performance Assessment
Essays and open-ended response questions are some of the most effective ways to assess a student’s abilities. Scoring these responses takes an extra measure of care. Performance assessment demands a high level of skill and absolute reliability and accuracy. DRC has been providing large-scale performance assessment services for over 25 years and we have a well-earned reputation for excellence.
We offer services for all scoring models including four- or six-point holistic, analytic, domain, primary trait, and others. Our performance assessment staff works closely with the client to ensure absolute clarity in scoring expectations.
DRC provides a full range of performance assessment services including: 
 | Prompt development and refinement |
| Rubric development and clarification |
| Anchor paper selection |
| Reader recruitment and selection |
| Scoring site set-up |
| Reader training and monitoring |
| Program evaluation |
Reader Training
Our readers are educators, writers, editors, and other professionals. Readers have, at a minimum, two years of college (four-year degrees when required by the client). Depending on project requirements, readers are assigned to specific content areas (e.g., the client may require that readers have a mathematics background to handscore responses to constructed-response mathematics items).
Reader Performance Monitoring
We are especially proud of our reader performance monitoring—the key to our consistent quality. Our custom-designed monitoring software analyzes every score assigned by a reader. Scoring directors review reports regularly to monitor each reader’s scoring validity. This system gives our clients complete confidence that our scoring is fair, impartial, and consistent.
Image Scanning and Scoring Technology
While paper-based scoring procedures serve us well, DRC continually pursues technologies to process and score student responses even faster, and to enhance our overall efficiency. To this end, we recently added image scanning technology to our performance assessment processes.
Scoring Facilities
DRC has four scoring facilities-two in the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area, one in Cincinnati, Ohio, and one in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. All three areas provide an excellent labor pool from which to recruit qualified readers. Depending on a project’s requirements, we may set up temporary scoring centers in the local area. We often have more than 1000 individuals on our scoring staff at any one time. We are well experienced at recruiting, hiring,
training, and retaining readers, efficiently and effectively.
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